Welcome to episode 420
of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro podcast recorded
live on 01/16/2026.
This is a show about Microsoft three sixty
five in Azure from the perspective of IT
pros and end users, where we discuss a
topic or recent news and how it relates
to you. It's that time of year again,
though, when Ben and Scott actually take a
bit of a break from Microsoft three sixty
five and Azure and talk about gadgets.
You know, those things we purchased or maybe
had purchased for us throughout the year that
we've enjoyed playing with and experimenting with. Essentially,
this episode solidifies us as full blown geeks
who have way too much fun with various
tech gadgets. So without further ado, what did
we spend our money on this year?
Hopefully, we can remember how to do this
thing. It's been a little bit. We're gonna
ease our way into it because when I
talk about Microsoft
three sixty five and Azure, Given the holidays
and the timing and things like that, and,
you know, frankly, it's our show, let's hop
in and talk about our kinda yearly tech
review and maybe some of the fun stuff
that we got for Christmas that we've bought.
Tentative title for this custom
for this episode, and spoiler for those listening,
is Ben convinces Scott to buy a three
d printer. A 100%. You need to do
this, Scott. Yeah. Should we start with that
one since you just said that? It's either
that or Scott convinces Ben to buy a
five k monitor or six k monitor. We'll
see.
Or Ben convinces Scott's wife to let him
buy a three d printer. That's gonna be
the uphill battle. Like like, really, the like,
we've talked about the wife acceptance factor in
the past. Yep. I can tell you, I
did float this idea for the last couple
weeks, like, hey, look at this cool fidget
toy that Ben printed out at home and
sent me a thing of, hey, look at
this grid system that he put in his
office and how organized everything is. And you
look at my desk and it's a mess.
Like, maybe that would help him do it.
It hasn't really resonated yet, so I'm gonna
kinda dig in a little bit and and
look for some tips here since you convinced
your wife,
or maybe your wife convinced you.
Or maybe I just kind of bought it
and asked for forgiveness.
There might have been a little bit of
that too of, I need a Christmas present
for me, and there's no big LEGO sets
I want. So
let's buy a three d printer. There's no
big LEGO sets because you hadn't seen CES
yet and the LEGO smart bricks and all
that. Yeah. We'll get into that. So let's
start with three d printers. So so you
got
a three d printer. Yes. The first one
you've ever had new to this. What kind
of printer did you get? And let's talk
a little bit about your experience.
I got the Bamboo Labs. I went with
them. The P2S.
So this is one that I've kinda had
my eye on it. I have a friend
that has the p one s, which was
the predecessor to the p two s. Shocker.
Yeah. I know. Right? And then the p
two s was announced, saw a bunch of
reviews, and there was,
based on the reviews I saw talking to
my friend, there was a very big
feature update, a lot of improvements from the
p one s to the p two s
for a very
marginal,
if any, price increase.
So I saw the notes. I actually went
to go buy it, and I couldn't buy
it in The US. We are not going
to spend a bunch of time on this.
Tariffs were affecting their ability
to
ship it, sell it in The US.
So I was watching all these videos. Everybody
was buying it, raving about it, loving it,
and I'm like, I can't buy it because
I live in The US. Eventually, they got
it all figured out, was able to purchase
it. I may have gone a little bit
of overboard or a little overboard because You?
Never. Yeah. Never. No. So I got that.
I also got the package with
the AMS two Pro,
which is like a filament feeder. So I
can put four spools of filament in and
it kinda automatically, if I'm printing multicolor,
will switch between them. I've done that a
little bit, but the other big advantage of
that is
this is all stuff I'm learning. The filament
certain filaments need to be dried. We live
in Florida, which is very humid, so I
wanted a good way to dry this filament.
And there's ways you can do it, like,
in the oven or go build filament dryers
or all of this. I'm like, you know,
this serves two purposes. It can dry the
filament. It can also feed the filament into
the printer.
So I got that with it, and then
I maybe bought a little bit too much
filament. Like, I got glow in the dark
filament. I have transparent filament.
I have
matte filament.
And then there's different like, the different types
of filament you can get, the PLA and
the PET g and, like, 30 other ones.
So that I would say has probably been
the biggest learning curve for me is not
so much how to use it. Like, it's
super simple to print stuff. You go to
Maker World, you download models, upload them, hit,
like, three buttons, and you can start printing.
But it's been
a lot more learning around
what filaments should I get, how do you
print most effectively with different filaments because
different heats and whether you have to dry
it or you don't have to dry it.
I've had some where, like, it doesn't stick
to the plate that it prints on, and
it's like, I forgot to clean it, and
then I have to go clean all my
greasy fingerprints off of it and
reprint. So a bunch of that type of
stuff, but, overall,
I mean, I'm up to, like, two hundred
and fifty
to three hundred hours printing on it now.
Like, you just got this thing. They're like
you've been printing twenty four seven since Right.
It just runs all night. Like, I find
a printer, I'm like, oh, this one takes
thirteen hours. I'll start this one at, like,
8PM tonight, so it'll be done in the
morning. But, no, like you said, it's been
a mix of some fidget toys. The kids
have loved the fidget toys, whether it's infinite
cubes that just kinda keep folding or
there were, like, little spiral of Christmas trees,
and I sent you a video of this
where you can drop it through and spin
it and fidget with it. And the kids
had so much fun with them. They're like,
this is part of it. They're like, dad,
we wanna give these to all of our
friends for Christmas for their different coop classes.
I ended up printing, like, 50 of these
Christmas trees
so the kids could give them to their
different friends and
all that. And realistically, I mean, each one
is like a buck and a half to
print it if you don't count the cost
of the printer itself. I was gonna say,
like, filament
Yeah.
And your time for
what that's worth Right. To go in To
do it. Get all that stuff done. Yeah.
I mean, I've been looking at three d
printers forever. I've tried to I think I
have, like, some of the same hesitations around,
like, the humidity, where you print it, what
does that look like. But I've heard really
good things about the Bamboo Labs stuff. Do
you see them all the time on YouTube
and things like that as you're going through?
Yeah. I've been impressed.
Yeah. The filament itself, like you said, I
did the fidget toys, and then I did
do containers for one of my drawers. I
have some IKEA drawers in my office. And
I could just go on and I'm like,
I wanna make bins for these drawers. And
someone made it's the Gridfinity system, made models
already where you can just go print, like,
the base plate for the system and then
print stackable bins. And
the one thing I like about it, my
wife gives me a hard time about it.
She's like, this feels like dollar store stuff.
If you could just go buy it at
the dollar store. I'm like, yeah. I could.
But at the dollar store, I can't go
in and say I want this to be
a 140 millimeters by a 170 millimeters by
50 millimeters.
So I can very much the customization
of it, whether it's that or all the
cable management under my desk now is all
done with stuff I three d printed. I've
printed Lego storage containers. And I think we'll
have to try and, like, include some pictures
in the show notes or things like that
of some Yeah. I'll put some pictures in.
Doctor. Some of the stuff that you've done
there because
it does have me enthralled. And I think
it's less convincing me, like I said, than
it is convincing
my wife to get this done. But funny
enough, you and I were chatting
a little bit and
you were talking about like, Oh, like maybe
you'll need to go get a set of
calipers, like digital calipers or something like that
for measuring all this stuff. Maybe I didn't
even mean to do this. Maybe it was
purely
subconscious on my part, but I did ask
my wife, like, on my wish list for
Christmas, I asked for a pair of digital
calipers, and she bought me one. So I'm
already ahead of the game. I have the
calipers,
just like, I Yeah. I'm so close. Almost
ready to go and get there. We'll see.
It's too bad the printer's like 80 times
the price of the calipers. Like you said,
my wife doesn't need to know that. Like,
she doesn't listen to this podcast, thankfully. Okay.
So we're safe. I might just, oops, look
at this new thing that appeared on my
desk here, which funny enough, maybe if we
can move on to the five ks or
six ks monitor thing. Yeah. You had stuff
appear on your desk that you're telling me
I should order. So I've been looking at
a you and I are both like unabashed
Apple fans, Mac fans, we both got MacBook
Pros, and you've gone further with like the
studios and things like that, but one of
the things that I've never experienced
is a five ks or a six ks
monitor. So I spent some time
at the
Apple store at like a retail store over
the holidays, like looking at the studio displays,
things like that. Not so much because I
wanted to buy a studio display, but I
was just interested in the whole five ks
aspect and people gushing at like, you know,
like, It's kind of like Christmas vacation, can't
see the lines, Russ, except, Oh, look, can't
see the pixels, can you?
And they're going to go figure that piece
out. So one of the nice benefits that
I get at work is we get a
benefit where we get a certain amount of
spend every year
for all sorts of things, for health, personal
health, I could buy gym membership, get it
reimbursed, things like that. But it also does
desktop things, so like if it's like ergonomic
desktop. So over the years, I have this
nice like Haworth Fern chair, It's a $1,500
office chair. I would never buy that chair
for myself, or I would never spend that
much money on a chair. I'm the guy
who like goes down the corner and is
like, Oh, it's $20
at the dollar store. Let's get it. And
then I'm miserable. But so I've done that.
I've done a standing desk over the years,
things like that. So I've kitted out my
desk based on that benefit and just having
it there, and it's kind of like free
money. So I was looking at some
five ks monitors, things like that, and I
was like, you know what? Like, I just
need to like pull the bullet and like
bite the bullet, get this done. Doctor. And
go get one. Doctor. I picked one up
and
I didn't even really like pay attention
when I was doing this, when I was
ordering, but I probably should have thought about
it a little bit more. But I ended
up picking up a it's a ViewSonic monitor.
So like the panel is what it is.
Five k on a Mac, I just gotta
say, like, the hype is there. I'm not
somebody who notices, like, the difference between 60
hertz and 75 hertz or 120, things like
that, but just the pixel density, things like
that clean cleans it up all great. So
so that's all good. But the nice thing,
and or maybe one of the kinda hidden
benefits and drivers here, was
that
at five ks resolutions or six ks resolutions,
things like that, you need a lot of
bandwidth. So you're typically talking, or I think
in most cases for everything I've seen, at
least in the Mac ecosystem,
you're talking about monitors that include things like
Thunderbolt four connectivity. Uh-huh. I didn't even know
this when I picked this particular model up,
but it has a
full KVM,
all that stuff built into it. So it
turns out that not only did I pick
up, like, this monitor that was like, oh,
let me swap out my 32 inches four
k for a 27 inches five k, and
that's been all good.
But also just simplifying my setup, like I've
had like a USB KVM here for a
long time for switching between like my personal
laptop and the work one, so that's another
box that sits on the desk. It has
all sorts of cables running into it because
it needs to go out to other things.
So now I've been able to consolidate all
that down just into this one monitor
and this one thing that sits in front
of me. So five ks monitors remain
pretty expensive.
But if you're somebody who's out there and
you're looking for something,
the prices are pretty good, at least for
like you and I in The US, like
you can get them from like US sellers
like Amazon or B and H photo,
that good stuff. So if somebody's been looking
for one of those and you're looking to
like bite like just place it, bite the
bullet and do it, like and you've got
maybe the income
to make that happen or a benefit at
work or something similar to what I have,
like, oh man, like it's been good.
Like it looks really good. It definitely helps
with like the eye strain thing. And at
least if you're on a Mac and the
way it does kind of display scaling,
all those kinds of things, just awesome. Like
really,
really good for that stuff. And then like
I said, they have all sorts of like
weird features. Like this one, I wasn't looking
for it, but it came with a KVM
KVM. And that all works really good. It
also has a light bar built into it.
So, you know, like the BenQ light bars
and things that sit at the top. Oh,
yeah. Yeah. So this one has a light
bar at the bottom, and so it's not
built into the top of the monitor. But
down at the bottom of the monitor, it
has an extra light that you can go
ahead
and turn on and off. And it's not
as nice like at least being in the
Apple ecosystem, I think like the studio display
or whatever it is would be a lot
nicer just because the integrations and things like
that. Like it's not as pretty as far
as like the looking at it and the
bezels and things like that, or like the
way the wires are sticking out of it,
super janky. Like, this is a ViewSonic five
k monitor that I picked up. Like, it's
dumb. Like, the power, like, when you plug
it in on the bottom, the power button,
like, it's not like a 90 degree cable,
so it's basically, like, hanging, like, straight out
the bottom of the monitor. So you gotta
get by some, like, aesthetic things.
But, you know, that aside, I've been really,
really happy with it to the point where
so I do a dual monitor setup. I
do one landscape in front of me, and
then I do a portrait monitor off to
the side for
long form reading code,
all those kinds of things. So I'm actually
debating, like, we just rolled into a new
year, so I still get that benefit. So
depending on how much of that I use
this year for, like, like I said, like
health, fitness benefits, things like that, if I
maybe got like the extra kid at the
end of the year, may maybe I'll go
pick another one of these up and then
just go dual dual five k.
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You know what else you could do, Scott?
That'll be another interesting one. What else can
I do? You could three d print some
ergonomic stuff for your desk. You don't have
to convince me. That might be a little
bit of a stretch. I'm all in on
the what's it called? The Gridfinity thing? Is
that it? Yeah. The Gridfinity and then, like,
the whole pegboard thing was the I did
open grid, but there's a few different, like,
hex board things. Gotcha. But on the monitor
topic, if 27 inch isn't big enough for
you and you want six k instead of
five k, at CES,
Dell I do not have this, but I'm
not gonna lie. I kinda want it. Dell
announced a 52
inch
six
k HDR 120 hertz
monitor. It kinda made me drool. Yeah. But
at 52 inches, like, you gotta be, like,
pretty far back because I'm telling you, like,
the sweet like, the pixel density thing, like,
can't see the lines, Russ. Like,
it's real. So I'd have to see something
like that in person. At least you can
go see, like, a 27 inches five k
or you can go see a six k
monitor up to, like, 32 inch, things like
that. The like, I only call it out
to say, like, the ecosystem's got a lot
better. Like like, these things are there. A
lot of them are limited to 60 hertz.
Oh, another, like, little nice surprise. Like, this
ViewSonic monitor, again, like, the panel's great. Maybe,
like, the connectivity is weird to look at,
things like that, but it also goes to
75 Hertz. I don't know. But I can't
tell the difference between sixty and seventy five
with my old man eyes. So that's a
Got it. See, and I already work on
a 43 inch, and I sit I'm probably
just around three feet away from my monitor
when I work. So for me, the jump
to 52 wouldn't be that big a deal.
But it does. You definitely need the right
desk setup. Either that or or you do
that 55 inch arc arc display or whatever
that that Samsung makes. Right?
I was trying to think. Like, I feel
like I didn't buy as much tech. Is
it bad that I'm, like, looking through my
Amazon shopping list to see what I bought
this year?
Nah. It's never bad. Only good stuff. I
mean, the Bamboo printer, I've gotten to the
point, Scott. I I have a lot of
tech. I like my tech, and I absolutely
like my new toys, but I feel like
my wife very well may disagree with this.
I'm pretty happy with my setup, and and
I'm trying to avoid just adding more clutter
to my office because I want new tech
toys. Oh, I bought new UPSs this year.
I had some batteries go out in the
UPSs, so I had to buy some new
batteries, some new UPSs. You're tugging at my
heartstrings because I need a new UPS.
That was another one. I just had one
die the other day. I'm like, do I
get a new battery for it or and
just replace the battery, like, off to eBay
I go, or should I
should I look at new ones? So I
think what I wanna do next is I
think I wanna do a rack mountable UPS
so that I can then selfishly get a
rack so that I can mount my UDM
Pro in a rack and get it off
the the bottom of the And then do
you know what else you can do? You
can three d print rack things too, mount
other stuff in your rack that aren't naturally
rack mountable. Look at this. I'm gonna fit
this in everywhere this this episode. It all
comes back to three d printing. It's funny
how funny how circular
the world is there. I should remember this.
I also got, I am a Logitech
mouse
junkie, maybe?
I love my Logitech mice probably as much
as I love my Max, and they came
out with the MX Master four this year.
And, naturally, the day they came out with
it, I bought two, one to go in
my backpack and one to be at my
desk with me. But I've had every version
I think I have them. I have one,
two, three, four, five. I, like, have my
Logitech mice displayed. You can't really see them
under the corner here. I think I have
six Logitech mice
as they've gone from the MX Master to
the two to the two s to the
three, three s. Three s. Yep. Four
Four s, whenever that comes. Yeah. Are you
liking the haptic feedback on it? I don't
use it a ton. I do like
so if people have used the Logitech Master
mice before,
they always had a thumb button underneath it,
but you had to push down on the
mouse, which was like a sideways movement with
your thumb, which for me was a little
bit unnatural.
On the four, they kinda moved it so
you can it's, like, on both sides of
your thumb, so you can squeeze the mouse.
Now to click that thumb button, which is
much nicer. I do use that more, and
they added shortcuts with it. So if I
push that button, I get some of the
haptic feedback, and I can have shortcuts
to AI, to multimedia, to launch,
like, finder.
You can kinda customize what you want it
to do. So it's like an extra mouse
button with Stream Deck ish type functionality
that just pops up on your screen. Kind
of useful.
The other thing they did is they switched
if again, if you use the other ones,
they had a little bit more of a
rubbery
surface under the palm of your hand that
they tended to get a little sticky, grimy
It disintegrates. It got gross. I would hold
mine up and show you how just frankly
nasty it is.
And no matter how much you clean it
or anything like, if you're somebody who like,
I don't know, I have bad habits, like
I eat lunch at my desk or things
like that. So like like, yeah, if you
have like a sandwich or like a potato
chip or something, and then you touch that
mouse afterwards, oh, it's in there. So the
hard plastic
is better for that, and I this is
gonna be some personal preference. I feel like
you compromise
some of the comfort that the three s
had when you go to the four, and
I don't know if it's
some of it might be the rubber.
I also feel like, and I should compare
it with a three s, the mouse is
a little
narrower. So I don't know if you ever
have the problem where you're, like, moving your
mouse and you bump into a Stream Deck
or you run into your keyboard and you
have to pick it up and just move
it a quarter inch or a half inch
or something. It's gonna sound weird, but the
pickup and movability of it is not as
comfortable. I feel like it takes more effort
to just pick up the mouse and move
it a little bit. And I don't know
if it's narrower. I don't know if they
changed the contour a little bit. I don't
know if the rubber had a little bit
more grippiness.
But that's something I noticed right away was
when I hit my keyboard and had to
move it, it felt like it took more
effort with the four than with the three
s. This is such a niche situation, but
what I really want them to do with
this is
I want them to make it a little
bit taller. And the reason is I have
an Ember mug. So I've got like that
coffee mug on my desk that's always hot
and charging. And because I keep the charging
plate on my desk, the lip of the
charging plate is perfect
for the right click button on that mouse,
and I'm right handed. So every time I
move the mouse over by my coffee cup,
it's not that I bump it. It's that
the button goes underneath that lip, and it
clicks. So sometimes I'll be in, like, meetings
and they like, and I just, like, right
clicks the screen or it does, like, a
weird action. It's like like, people are like,
oh, did you wanna talk? Like, no. Sorry.
I didn't wanna talk. My mouse my my
mouse was over the mute button, and I
happened to go and grab my coffee mug,
and I touched my mouse, and it unmuted
me.
Yeah. I've never had that. I've had the
opposite problem sometimes with a coaster where the
button goes right over it, and I go
to click and I can't
because the coaster's
holding the button up. But, yes, a little
bit taller, that would work. I don't know
if it's taller or not. I don't think
it is. But, yeah, that was something else
I bought this year. Absolutely. Like, all the
weird third world or first world problems we
run into here. Yeah. So I got one
more for you. I know you got to
go to a meeting real quick and then
we'll cut things off. So millimeter wave sensors,
I picked Oh. And I was able to
snag when and you got to watch these
on like Camel or something like that. Okay.
I've had an Aqara FP two for a
long time. That's a millimeter wave sensor. I've
got it up here on the wall by
my desk. So what it does is when
I sit down at my desk, I've got
all my stuff plugged into smart plugs, and
it just turns it on, turns it off.
So if I get up, walk away, things
like that. So I got an FP two,
which you have to plug in via USB,
so now I got a cord running up
the wall, like it's janky, right? It doesn't
look good. So they made the FP 300,
which is a wireless five in one. So
it's a millimeter wave PIR, light temperature and
humidity sensor, but it's battery powered. I forget
if they're like CR twenty thirty two's or
twenty twenty five's, things like that. You just
mount it up on the wall, no wires.
The batteries are supposed to last about three
months, so I was able to pull down
my FP2, put this thing up there, and
it's just a lot smaller,
works with the whole Acara ecosystem,
ties in with
Home Assistant,
Alexa, Google Home, just does all that stuff.
If somebody's looking for, like, one of these
and you're like, you're looking for, like, a
turnkey one Uh-huh. Super cool. The FP2s are
great. This one I love for the lack
of wire, and as long as they like
like, even at three months, if the battery
dies, whatever, I'll just swap the batteries out.
It's way easier. It's smaller,
mounts easier, just a really good
little device, and it's been rock solid for
me so far. Haven't had any drops out
from Wi Fi or things like that. Occasionally,
I get those on, like, my f p
two. But if you're looking for, like, room
home automation, like I walked into the room,
I walked out of the room, millimeter wave's
great for that because if you're sitting down
and watching TV, like, turn the TV on,
but then you stop moving, typically, like, just
a motion sensor might shut the room down.
Like, maybe somebody's been in, like, an office
building when the lights shut off, and you
kinda wave your hand in the conference room
to come back. You don't have to do
that with millimeter wave sensors. They're just really
good, excellent. There's a whole, like, ecosystem out
there, but I I really love the Aqara
ones. Like I said, the FP two has
been great. The I've used that for, like,
two years. Plus the FP 300 now. Been
running it for a month, and it's been
rock solid. I just picked some of these
up because I'm in the Unifi since we're
talking about it, and then I really should
go. Unifi came out with their Superlink
device, which brings in, like, environmental sensors and
some of that. They just released their
motion sensor
or Unifi.
I ordered two of them. I don't know
if those are millimeter wavelength
or not. I was just looking. They're all
in one sensors that they put out there.
They do do motion detection.
No. It's not the all in ones.
They have a specific motion one there. I
just dropped a link in the chat. Oh,
the motion sensor. Gotcha. Yeah. I don't know
if that's millimeter wave. I have their environmental
sensors, which are kinda nice. It's just something
I've been playing with. Cool. Another thing for
folks to look at. So we'll get back
to our regularly scheduled program around, like, m
three sixty five and Azure and all that
stuff. But always like chatting
about the
new toys and everything that's out there, and
now I gotta go convince my wife to
Absolutely. Three d printer. Get a three d
printer. Yep. Or come up with a health
and ergonomic reason that you need one. Absolutely.
Use your money. Your yearly budget for your
three d printer. Alright. Thanks, Ben. Awesome. Thanks,
Scott. Have a good one. You too. We'll
talk to you later. Bye.
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